Endless Night

Endless Night was a British movie based on an Agatha Christie whodunit set in an isolated house on a stretch of remote English coastline. The film was given a theatrical release in the UK in 1972, but its poor reception led it to being sold directly to American TV. Murder on the Orient Express was still two years away, and producers had not yet twigged to the fact that Agatha Christie adaptations always worked better as period pieces. The Grand Dame of crime fiction did not care for the modern tone of the film and was shocked by the inclusion of nudity.

Herrmann was full of enthusiasm when he started work on the picture. Still experimenting with unusual orchestrations, he hit on the idea of using a Moog synthesizer to give the score an eerie quality. In 1968 Walter Carlos had released Switched On Bach, an album of classical music reinterpreted with the Moog, which quickly became one of the highest-selling classical discs of all time. Carlos would go on to work with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining (he would also become a she - Wendy, like Jack Torrance's wife - after sex reassignment surgery in 1972). The Moog was an established part of rock recordings and The Beatles had experimented with it on some of the tracks for Abbey Road in 1969. The first film soundtrack to be credited with its use is John Barry's adrenalin-pumping score for the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the same year. Herrmann became so enamoured with the instrument's possibilities that he used it in his next two scores.

Endless Night, however, proved to be a disappointing experience for Herrmann, and, embarrassed by the final product, he turned down an invitation to attend a screening with the author's husband. Had the film been a success, Herrmann's score might not have become the rarity it is today. Unreleased on disc, it can only be heard as it was meant to be, as background to the film on DVD.